Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how flows of material/digital content between socialist Havana and the capitalist Miami diaspora point to emerging contested yet co-constituted formations of Cuban identity on and off the island through networks that simultaneously democratise and individualise media consumption

Paper long abstract:

For several years Cuba's 'el paquete' has attracted international attention for its ability to procure and circulate foreign digital content across an island with limited internet connectivity, with many supposing this content is imported to Havana from the nearby diasporic centre of Miami. This paper explores how the island's domestic networks of digital media sharing are in fact exported from Havana to Miami as objects both for public exhibition and personal consumption. Cubans in the diaspora import el paquete as a means of connecting with their homeland and media that invoke nostalgia for them, but also as a way of maintaining a variety of consumerist choice they once enjoyed in socialist Cuba, which, due to copyright restrictions in the U.S.A, remains prohibitively expensive for them to access in the diaspora. Meanwhile others in the diaspora are now seeking ways of inserting targeted advertising for Miami businesses into Cuba's el paquete as it centralises around increasingly individualised brand and 'reputation', in the hope of drumming up further business via relatives back on the island and remittances. This paper shows how, quite apart from being an isolated island, Cuba is in fact highly interconnected with multiple transnational communities, and by tracking el paquete and flows of digital media, we see the island as central in connecting these otherwise disparate digital communities. A focus on these digital flows also reveals co-constituted processes of identity formation which in some ways resist hegemonic or 'capitalist' conceptions in the U.S.A.